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Arizona Bill Would Make Students In Grades 4-12 Participate Once In An Hour of Code (azpbs.org)
theodp writes: Christopher Silavong of Cronkite News reports: "A bill, introduced by [Arizona State] Sen. John Kavanagh [R-Fountain Hills] would mandate that public and charter schools provide one hour of coding instruction once between grades 4 to 12. Kavanagh said it's critical for students to learn the language -- even if it's only one session -- so they can better compete for jobs in today's world. However, some legislators don't believe a state mandate is the right approach. Senate Bill 1136 has passed the Senate, and it's headed to the House of Representatives. Kavanagh said he was skeptical about coding and its role in the future. But he changed his mind after learning that major technology companies were having trouble finding domestic coders and talking with his son, who works at a tech company." According to the Bill, the instruction can "be offered by either a nationally recognized nonprofit organization [an accompanying Fact Sheet mentions tech-backed Code.org] that is devoted to expanding access to computer science or by an entity with expertise in providing instruction to pupils on interactive computer instruction that is aligned to the academic standards."
One hour of instruction is definitely going to be effective in teaching a programming language. Why in the world have I spent my entire life perfecting my art.
...could only be stopped by California Mike or Illinois John.
In the past schools' main purpose was to teach children how to be cheap industry workers. This feels like the past may be coming back.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
This is clever, but I don't think it's as clever as they think it is. And I don't think they intended it to be clever.
If there's an hour of coding class in school at some point, that means that would-be nerds will be introduced to it, and if they like it then they can look into it themselves. Non would-be nerds would have an hour of weird confusing shit and then never have to worry about it again. That's the clever bit, it's cheap and it doesn't force kids to do stuff.
BUT. If the one hour is shit then it'll turn kids off programming (not entirely a bad thing, yeah...) and kids who would've found out about it in their own time might not do it at all.
One hour of code between grades 4-12.
So, a fourth grader can learn to move the turtle to make a shape.
Or, a twelfth grader can learn how to make html, head, body, and a few divs.
Surely, this will save us from our dire STEM shortage.
If companies want workers with rudimentary programming skills so much, make some community college course, which teaches rudimentary programming skills, and offers a certificate. Companies can then mention said certificate in job postings. Of course, if employers want employees with more skills, employers can just pay more.
"it's critical for students to learn the language" The actual article mentions JavaScript. Is this "the language" students must learn?
1 hour during all of elementery ?
Learning to print 'hello world !' will definately make a lot of children interested to pursue a carreer in IT and give the us their edge back guys. Well done. Fixed it.
Now they need similar laws for sexual education, drug awareness, and laws regarding privacy and surveillance. No, "Just say 'No'" is not an education.
I don't know the quality of education in Arizona so this is a generic complaint that childhood education doesn't provide sufficient life skills.
Jesus - stop deciding FOR people what they will learn.
It never works anyway - you can't take people, put them in classes, and go "learn!"
They never asked to be there.
Kids know what they like. Let them learn what they want to learn, because there's no other way. You can't teach by forcing people to be in classes.
Encourage our children to take STEM courses throughout their education (like the foreigners who outshine us every year), we force kids to take a one-time course just to say, "See? Our kids like it too!"
It might add some small amount of coders to the workforce who would otherwise have never tried it out. But, that is probably insignificant. What I'm more interested in is priming people to "get" tech.
Working at small non-tech companies for the past ~5 years really opened my eyes to how completely unready for tech most people are. Old, young, it doesn't matter -- so many people have no comprehension of what developers do beyond maybe "magic", and practically shut down when asked to participate.
We don't need America to have more developers, but we do need America to get ready for a world where every company is a tech company.
Arizona Bill...
That sounds like the name of a gunslinger that just blew into town. Not only can he handle his six shooters, he's also the fastest guy on a Dvorak keyboard in six states and he writes C code faster than a pony express rider with a Comanche war party on his heels ... nah, that doesn't sound quite right but still cooler than a dull old state senate bill.
There is no STEM shortage.
There is extreme amount of TECH and an unrealistic expectation that candidates have experience with 5+ variants OF EVERYTHING.
scripting, programming, web languages, this framework, that framework, configuration management tools , monitoring tools, dev envs, big data tools, cloud providers, CiscoUCS, Active Directory, entire legacy system like Solaris and AIX, and insert latest Hipster technologies here: ________________
for example, I just saw this requirement for a (non senior) Linux Administrator position:
Requirements: Informix, MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle, SQL Scripting
Really? 4 different SQL dialects for 4 completely different databases is required?
sounds like a real clusterfuck.
What next, a one hour first aid video to solve a nursing shortage??? A one hour civics lesson and they'd be over qualified to be a politician.
I think it should be mandatory that all college freshman students participate in one hour of basketball dunking per day.
Oh, you mean not every 18-year old is over 6 feet tall, and possesses the athletic ability to dunk a basketball?
Gosh, that must mean that not everyone is cut out for it. You know, kind of like coding, so how about we stop with this pointless "mandatory" bullshit already.
Looking for a skill that would truly benefit future generations? Perhaps we should mandate an hour of studying the Constitution every day, for an enslaved society is still enslaved, no matter how skilled they are.
This is against my deeply held religious beliefs. They want to teach young impressionable children how to feed the Beast! /s
How about teaching them how to use a hammer or a pipe wrench or to change a battery in a car? Why is coding so important? There's a shortage of trades as well as stem. Did that past eight years help breed a generation that doesn't want to work?
Just say no
You may not believe it, but back in the pre-1970s, every student taking science courses was expected to learn how to use a slide rule. Sometimes it was a similar one-hour intro, sometimes it came with the curriculum.
Programming high-level languages is the slide rule of the current era. Despite what many people think(cough cough Excel cough), you simply cannot be a scientist or engineer if you can't write decent code in, say R or python or Matlab.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
English lessons force everyone to do some writing too, yet how many students actually become authors. And of these, how many become authors BECAUSE of the grammar and language lessons they received?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
When I was in 6th grade, we had a semester of shop class and a semester of home economics.
(In previous generations, the boys had a year of shop and the girls had a year of home ec.)
It all seemed kind of hokey: it was clearly a vestige of an earlier time, but, whatever.
Anyway, if you want to expose everyone to computers, that's the place to slot it in:
a semester or a year of computer class in 6th grade.
I bet he has a crony who's willing to "provide" this service for a nice government contract, and then he gets s kickback somewhere.
"An hour of Math is definitely going to be effective in teaching math. Why in the world have I spent my entire life perfecting my PhD level math?"
"An hour of English is definitely going to be effective in teaching how to write a novel. Why in the world have I spent my entire life perfecting my art"?
"An hour of Shop class is definitely going to be effective in teaching how to build a house. Why in the world have I spent my entire life perfecting house building"?
The point is to expose you to what is out there. Most slashdotters seem to have been lucky enough to have been exposed through other means. I learned to code because I just happened to find HyperCard and a HyperCard book at the library then learned to code TI-BASIC because I was bored in Math class and read my TI-89 manual. It was constant exposure that started
Without those two bits of happenstance I wouldn't make my living writing code as a Mechanical Engineer. The point of adding this is to expose kids to it so that if it piques their interest they can take a second hour. Or a 3rd hour. Or make a career out of it.
No one coming up with these government "code" initiatives actually understands programming. This is how Kavanagh has gone from anecdotal evidence via his son (who was either paraphrased, or is also a ignorant), to creating a mandate of 1 hour of Javascript training. A side affect of their ignorance is that they're reaching out to organizations looking for money, who love to push the BS like "Anyone can code!" or "You can learn (X) in just (Y) days" to greedily increase their customer base.
If the idea is exposure, how about starting at a higher level. You don't get people interested in aerospace be explaining how to wind-correct a nominal flight path - you give them a simple, fun overview of what aerospace engineering is, key principles, and unique examples of its application. I believe you can do the same thing with programming, if you put the effort and knowledge into setting up the presentation(s) for your audience.
Why not just use this hour to train them to be plumbers or electricians? They are far more likely to be able to solder two copper pipes together or wire a light switch in an hour than produce anything tangible with a computer program.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The sole purpose of this is so that some politician can claim "I proposed legislation to ensure that all grade-school children in this state are taught programming" next time they're up for re-election. It doesn't matter if the bill passes or fails, it doesn't matter if what the kids are to be taught amounts to one hour over eight years of schooling or a full hour a week for the full eight years of grades 4-12, since all this is really about is to get a line on a politician's resume that shows how *deeply* they care about STEM education. That said, one hour over eight years is a nice safe way of ensuring that the person behind it can't be accused of "wasting taxpayer dollars" should it actually pass.
plumbers, welders, dishwashers etc don't need to learn to k0d3. not everyone should. we need blue collar workers as much as we need k0d3rz. why dont they make those kids do welding, plumbing, wiring instead. far more useful, especially later in life. 'more government'. thats working well isnt it.
Too many government bureaucrats deciding what people should learn, when they should learn it because of politics.
lol sorry laughng to hard to write the code .....in canada you get a lot more then one hour
One, this is oddly progressive for the predominantly republican state of Arizona.
Two, I don't think it's a good idea. Not everyone has the special talent for programming. Others (myself included) are marginally decent at it, but still have no desire to actually do it. Those who have the interest and drive to learn how to do it usually end up doing it on their own. It's not like you need to access to a school's computer lab these days, you can write code on a smartphone. Granted, that's far from optimal, but so are most school computer labs.
Is there really some huge demographic of people who are both talented and want to program, but somehow don't figure that out on their own by age 15? Seems unlikely to me. Kids with interest in this sort of stuff are already working on it themselves. The last thing they want is to sit in a classroom typing Hello World programs over and over again until everyone catches up. All that's going to to do is bore them. The same types of people who excel at programming, also get bored easily working in a classroom setting. So why taint their favorite activity?
It's amazing how many people have no understanding of value and its relation to supply and demand. They don't understand that things like college degrees and ability to code are valuable because they're relatively scarce. Why isn't it clear that if everyone has a college degree that the college degree is economically worthless? The same for the ability to code. People with college degrees and programming skills make money because they are in short supply. If every degenerate on the street has those then they'll be worth about minimum wage.
Digital literacy is far more important. You can't code if you don't know how the tools work. That's like asking small children to cook a three course meal when at best, they can put a pop tart in the toaster. Ridiculous. I think coding should be a math elective in junior high or high school, not more nonsense in the tradition of common core (i.e. teaching knowledge without context to understand or implement the knowledge. Without contextual understanding, it's pretty much just meaningless words).
Since school is about teaching kids the skills they will need in life, how about exposing kids to unemployment early? That and having the school bully become class president.
I live in Arizona, Kavanagh is the same guy who pushed SB1070 and helped kill off a few billion in business for the state with his racism. He's the guy who's making everything illegal so he can lock you up in his pal's private prisons.
He's a corrupt as the day is long, and this is one of those "look how high tech I am" bills he uses to fool the rubes into voting for him.
He recently made stealing an American flag a felony with prison time. Prison time and a big fine for a few dollars worth of fabric, and stealing is already pretty illegal, it's a bill to appeal to his Tea Party base.
Now he's making Arizona famous worldwide by making it a thought crime to be at a protest. The cops can round you up and take your home if they think you MAY riot.
I love the desert, the sunsets are amazing, the weather in Phoenix is a 10 nine months out of the year, but the state government is total con when it's not being totally authoritarian.
As someone who worked in industry, taught computer science, and returned to industry: lol. An hour of code? The majority of students can't do a damn thing after 9 weeks of coding. The ones who can don't really need much guidance, they figure it out on their own.
I'd say it couldn't hurt, but dollars to donuts it will be an unfunded mandate and local schools will foot the bill of finding competent CS teachers (good luck) or training new ones (who, if they're any good, will promptly leave to make 3 times as much money in industry). It will likely be a boondoggle.
I hear all this talk about learning "The Language". And I am reminded of the Edsger Dijkstra / folklore quote "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." IMHO, kids need to learn some basics of the machine and what it does, before going into learning a language to do those things. (And yes, I am aware of the Bill Gates quote that seems to say the opposite (if taken without context). But I'm not a big MS fan, so maybe I'm biased against Gates in any case.)
On the other hand, Finland seems to introduce their school kids to the principles and concepts of e.g. looping, conditionals and variables without computers and in conjunction with other (real-life) activities. But hey, who has time for Linus' home country and their crazy ideas?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
I fell for this click-bait. It was only after a couple minutes reading the comments when I realized that "one hour" must mean "one credit hour". I tend to think authors make some effort to say what they mean, my bad. That and the fact that I've been out of school for decades. I'm still waiting for the more important subjects to be inserted into the K-12 educational system: Texting, Electronic Security, How to use a phone, How to fasten a shoe with things called laces, How to wipe your ass, How to negotiate a purchase, how to have a civil conversation, how to research an issue, things like that. I doubt if coding is going away anytime soon, but its about as useful to the average person as learning hydrodynamics. This will be even more true as A.I. takes over the actual "coding" (entry-level) jobs...although come to think about it I wonder if their 'invasion' will be bottom-up or top-down...
I don't understand why coding is treated like a simple skill, similar to, say, typing, that anyone can learn. I'm not saying you need a talent, but definitely not everybody can code, and even fewer can produce quality code. And there is nothing worse than poorly written code created by someone who learned to code to get a high-paying job, but who doesn't really get coding. You know, unnecessarily complex and convoluted, full of bugs, impossible to debug or rewrite part of it. When it's easier and faster to start from scratch than to fix the mess they created. I'm not saying we shouldn't promote learning how to code, but forcing everyone to learn it is like forcing everyone to learn how to write poetry.
I think it should be mandatory that all college freshman students participate in one hour of basketball dunking per day.
PE is required in most schools as far as I know.
Even in college I had mandatory physical education classes I had to take. I could chose the subject but I had to take something.
I actually don't think it's bad to expose all students to coding, even those who might be bad at it - because you also never know who might be good at it or enjoy it. If it were a whole class I would say it's probably too much, but at least an hour seems fine to just expose kids to some possibilities...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That is still the goal of public schools. And it doesn't matter, this proposal is silly. Free educational resources for learning to code are abundant. Anyone with the slightest interest finds opportunity and support everywhere they turn around.
Clearly, lack-of-education is not the reason that the industry is bereft of coders. Therefore, more education will not solve this problem.
But those who do not realize this simple fact still have loud voices.
Ignoring for the moment that today's students need to prepare for Jobs in tomorrow's world, not "today's", this one-hour activity is 'critical' to finding a job? What about reading, math, science? Aren't they also kind of important? It is simply asinine to call "One Hour of Code" activities 'critical' to finding a job, either today or tomorrow...
There's nothing wrong with that. Parents or children don't usually know what's worth learning (unless they've had a successful career). So keeping an eye on the job market is a good start. But it mustn't stop there. Firstly because the job market will highlight required skills for being a good little employee, which is not necessarily your best career path. And secondly because the job market can not even tell you about useful skills for tomorrow's employees, just for today's employees.
Necessary life skills vary (nowadays the ability to spot fake news and to do a little bit of research online are useful) , but necessary job skills mostly include an ability to interface with others and specific skills that are valuable in themselves (processing or specialist effect skills).
Interfacing skills involve the ability to communicate (command of language), cultural understanding (in Western society you need to be able to read a clock, keep appointments, stick to deadlines) some understanding of social dynamics, ability to adopt a role, ability to commit to fulfilling that role (be it a leading or a following role, or one with aspects of both). Unless you're aiming for a job that requires only elementary school skills, you'll need to receive further education. Study skills are essential there. Everyone should learn as much about interface and study skills as they can absorb.
Much of those interfacing and study skills will be taught to you by your parents. That's a natural and intense process that goes on all the time during childhood and it's quite efficient. Which is why children from middle or upper class parents have a head start when it comes to preparing for middle class or upper class type jobs.
Some of the harder skills to learn (reading, writing, grammar, arithmetic, mathematics, structured thinking) are taught by professionals (teachers).
Coding is an aspect of a specific personal skill (and a shallow one at that) that goes into the skill set of a software engineer. Becoming a good software engineer takes talent, time, and effort. A tiny little course in school might serve as an "awareness raiser", but nothing else. Competence (obtained through talent and training) at coding alone qualifies you for one function only: code monkey.
A basic understanding of contemporary machinery (such as gained through learning how to program) is a valuable interface skill in that it allows you to understand a lot more about how our society works.
The question is: what is our objective here?
If our goal is to try and supply slightly more and slightly better code monkeys, start teaching Java or C and integrate that into the curriculum as a full-blown subject.
If our goal is to give children a taste of what machinery is like, and how to work with it, then a short (20 hour) course in Basic or Python plus building a simple web page and (perhaps an elementary app for their smartphone to whet their interest) will do fine.
It shouldn't surprise anybody that after an era where "self expression" and "personal development" were in vogue we're seeing a reappraisal of job-related skills. We shouldn't go overboard with that but continue to teach time-tested (and difficult to learn) interfacing skills. In addition to which there may well be a place for more emphasis on job-related skills.
There's too many coders as it is.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Accessing FTP sites with Java and/or Python. It will be great training. See article above this.
Assuming the teacher knows what they are doing, that scratch is up and running on machines before the class starts, that there is enough equipment for 1 PC/ipad per student, that there are a few adult volunteers to help kickstart the kids. Then they can learn something worthwhile in that hour.
They will learn if they like doing this kind of thing and they will learn that it is easy and they will learn that they can download scratch to their PC at home or their school ipad and play around with it on their own.
I know it works because I have led a one-off class like that at an elementary school (after hours) and a few of the kids came up to me weeks later and said that they had got into programming scratch because of it and they entered scratch projects at the science fair
Nullius in verba
Every politician out there seems to think that computer programming will bring back all the good paying jobs because anyone can learn to do it and it pays well. Which everyone in this discussion knows is complete and utter B.S. I say it is a warning that computer programming, coding call it what you will, is going to be among the first jobs to be automated and disappear as a career choice. Because it is a very good paying job (and we can't have that, CEO needs his bonus, etc.) AND -because- everyone CANNOT learn how to do it. I know all the arguments, I have read them here and elsewhere. But it is all just spitting in the wind, Ladies and Gents. It is the next step.